Tag: death

A queen’s bed

Some years back when James and I had purchased our lakeside dream home, we decided to splurge on a new bedroom set.

When he met me, I was still using the dresser my parents had bought for me when I was in high school, and then we used his late parent’s set. It was one of those blonde wood sets, and not really my taste. Our new set was very ornate: think Italian Renaissance/bordello. I liked to think even the very picky Borgias would have approved! And since it took a few years to pay off, I was not going to part with it easily once I moved.

Fast forward to my new life here in Virginia where I have a much smaller house. When the movers delivered my bedroom set from the storage unit, it quickly became apparent my king-sized bed, with the lush leather padded headboard, would not fit up the narrow stairs of my foursquare, never mind in my tiny new bedroom.

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So I found myself shopping for a queen mattress set. I settled on a simple bed frame – not ornate but that was OK in my new world order where “bordello” or anything even remotely sexy in connotation would never be the order of the day. I managed to get the other bedroom pieces crammed into my room and into the guest room. Sometimes, the fecund lushness of the pieces seem to mock my solitary existence, but screw it.

As I was laying in bed this morning, I was thinking about how I went from a king to a queen – thanks to my husband’s untimely death (is there a timely one?). No longer do I roll over to see my husband, already awake and smiling at me (not sure if that was due to fondness…my snoring or both).

So this morning as I am want to do, I shed a few tears thinking about where my life has brought me since he died. My rational mind nibbles at me like a rat: “You are a lucky girl!” Lucky to have a nice home in a wonderful new town. Lucky to have family nearby. Lucky to be starting a new job next week, after almost a year of unemployment.

But my emotions (I see these as a soft, fuzzy hamster) keep me pining for that king bed and the life it once represented as a married woman. A person who used to wake up with the self-satisfied assurance that she would not be alone. Never alone.

 

The six pound gorilla in the room

What weighs six pounds, is covered with white fur and has horrible halitosis?

That would be my cat O’Connor, whom I believe may be 19 years old, but I am not totally sure.

I have always had a cat in my life. When I was six, my brother brought home a tiger-striped kitten he found while playing war down at the wooded stream near our house. Tiger (such an original name) was absolutely an outdoor cat. He had the war wounds to prove it, and would drag himself home from a rather nasty night of what I can only imagine was vying for the paw of some much sought after female. He lived a long life, but his ears were ragged and he sported a collection of battle scars. A no nonsense guy who did not like a lot of coddling. Just as well, since those decades ago we didn’t treat our pets like children. They lived outdoors, and trips to the vet were few and saved for dire medical emergencies only.

Today my cats are kept indoors. I had learned the hard way that letting them roam in suburban neighborhoods with a prevalence of cars and coyotes was a bad idea.

According to statistics, Americans spent more than $60 billion on their pets in 2015. A lot of this was on food, but a significant chunk was toward vet bills, grooming and designer doggy purses. We are truly kookoo over our furry friends. Just look at the prevalence of pet spas, heated beds and silly outfits on Pinterest. We humanize our animals for sure, which perhaps the petless cannot truly understand. We do it so much it has earned a fancy clinical term:anthropomorphism.

Yes, I talk to my cats and believe they understand me.  (As much as a cat wants to. They’re so stuck up! Like the snotty, pretty-girl clique in high school.)

But let’s look beyond our regular pets at the four-legged heroes – cats that sit with dying nursing home patients; military and police dogs that risk their lives to protect humans. They are truly remarkable, and only ask that we keep them fed and loved.

My friends tease me because I am so soft-hearted about pets that it’s put me off Sarah McLaughlin forever. Meanwhile, give me a juicy episode of “The Walking Dead” and I’ll watch unflichingly as the heads roll. It does not make sense I know, except I just feel that animals are so much more defenseless than people. They provide such comfort that it makes putting up with a roommate with bad breath who doesn’t allow you to wear black outside the house well worth the small sacrifices.